We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 CHILD-BRIGHTTraining Innovation Fund (TIF) competition, an initiative to facilitate the development of innovative training activities that will foster patient-oriented research training and mentoring within research projects focused on childhood brain-based developmental disabilities.

We received a number of strong proposals and following an in-depth review, the evaluation committee recommended two proposals for funding based on the impact that their proposed deliverables would have on increasing capacity for patient-oriented research within the CHILD-BRIGHT Network and beyond.

We congratulate the two following successful TIF winners:

Project:

Learning Together: the use of simulation to enhance and enable authentic and meaningful research partnerships

Project summary: The proposed project aims to develop a suite of five simulation-based learning modules designed for multi-stakeholder research teams that include patients/families as partners. Adopting a co-learning approach, these modules will be designed to address complex challenges experienced by patients and scientists while engaging in patient-oriented research.

Project:

Development of a partnership model for collaborative research with youth with disabilities

Gail Teachman

Lead: Gail Teachman, Assistant Professor, Western University

Funding amount granted: $10,000

Project timeline: Jan 2019-Jan 2021

Project summary: The project aims to pilot a model for meaningfully engaging youth with diverse disabilities as collaborators in an integrated knowledge translation (iKT) research project. This project will actively engage youth collaborators as well as other stakeholder groups in the creation of training modules that train health care providers to approach childhood disability as an interaction between physiological and social determinants of disability.

A special thank you to our financial partners for their ongoing contributions and commitment, and to all the patients, families, committee members, and CHILD-BRIGHT supporters who guide us in our work.

The families of severely disabled children dedicate their lives to nurture and protect them, but what happens when the funding and services they rely on are cut off? W5's Sandie Rinaldo investigates the uncertain future faced by disabled children when they become adults.

A special thank you to our financial partners for their ongoing contributions and commitment, and to all the patients, families, committee members, and CHILD-BRIGHT supporters who guide us in our work.

Wendy Ungar, Co-Lead of CHILD-BRIGHT's Health Economics team, Senior Scientist at SickKids and a Professor at the University of Toronto, presented a Researcher Lightning Round talk following the TEDxYorkUSalon AutismInnovations on April 22, 2017 on the science of Health Economics. Watch 'Where does the money go? Shifting the curve in early autism intervention'